For Peer Review

Post-Taliban Measures to Eliminate Gender Discrimination

in Employment.

Journal: Equality, diversity and inclusion: An international journal

Manuscript ID: EDI-04-2011-0021.R1

Manuscript Type: Original Article

Keywords: Afghanistan, Employment, Religion, Women, Discrimination, Equality

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

For Peer Review

Post-Taliban Measures to Eliminate Gender Discrimination in Employment.

Abstract

Purpose: The issue of discrimination in Afghanistan is pervasive, and this present

report focuses on gender discrimination in employment deemed particularly

important for immediate policy intervention by the international community. The

purpose of this paper is to evaluate the measures taken to eliminate gender

discrimination in employment since the American-led invasion in 2001.

Methodology: The paper is a literature review with potential to inform policy change

to improve the employment situation of rural Afghan women. Although there is

paucity of data on many facets of Afghan society, this paper synthesises available

information regarding measures to improve employment for Afghan woman and

discusses factors that should be considered in future employment policies.

Findings: This paper establishes that many rural Afghan women today experience

cultural and religious barriers to employment. The paper argues that much as there

have been significant improvements in the employment situation of Afghan women

living in cities since the US-led invasion, rural Afghan women still suffer from

inequality in employment. In addition, the paper finds that the barriers to employment

opportunities confronting rural Afghan women today stem from existing cultural and

religious practices.

Practical implications: The current Afghan Government and international

community should pursue policies that would terminate the cultural and religious

practices that violate Afghan women’s employment rights.

Value: The most valuable part of this paper is the new insight into gender

discrimination in employment in the run up to the ten-year anniversary of the ouster

of the repressive Taliban regime. The paper findings would serve as input for the

current Government’s efforts to address gender discrimination in Afghanistan.

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Keywords: Afghanistan, Employment, Religion, Women, Discrimination, Equality.

Paper type: Policy paper

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Introduction

The ouster of the repressive Taliban regime opened up new possibilities for the

emancipation of Afghan people. Since the defeat of the Taliban, international

community in collaboration with the new Afghan Government have initiated a number

of policy measures aimed at improving the employment situation of Afghan women.

For example, the Bonn Agreement called for specific attention to the role of women

and established a dedicated government structure for this purpose, the Ministry of

Women’s Affairs. The core strategy for women’s advancement was defined as

“gender mainstreaming” in the National Development Framework (Olesen et al.,

2005). The former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called for restoration of the

rights of women during the Afghan Women’s Summit for Democracy in Brussels in

December 2001. The United Nations’ Special Mission to Afghanistan (UNSMA)

made several efforts to negotiate the withdrawal of various discriminatory decrees,

including those banning women’s employment. This was in addition to the

Afghanistan 2001 Consolidated Inter-agency Appeal to expand access for Afghan

women to education, health services and employment and income-generating

activities (UN, 2002).

An objective assessment of the success of these initiatives nine years since the

American-led invasion; could only be made through a thorough examination of the

current employment situation of Afghan women. To examine the current employment

situation of Afghan women, one needs to first of all study the nature of gender

discrimination in Afghan society.

Gender Discrimination in Employment

This paper is neither a comparative study of the Taliban regime nor current Afghan

regime employment policies. Rather, it focuses on the employment situation of

Afghan women in light of policy measures since the ouster of the Taliban. The

discussion of the Taliban regime intends to serve as a benchmark against which to

measure the efforts made by the current Afghan Government and international

community aimed at improving the employment situation of Afghan women. The

Taliban rose to power in 1994 and issued an edict in 1999 that allowed only women

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with no other means of support to take limited paid work. In 1964, prior to the Taliban

regime, Government-employed Afghan women were members of the Constitution

Drafting Committee, and in the 1970s, there were three women legislators in Afghan

parliament (UN, 2002). The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, elected into

power in 1978, pursued employment policy that saw 50 percent of Afghan women

working in the civil service and many others employed by universities, private

corporations and airline companies. The Afghanistan Government signed the

international bill of rights on the elimination of discrimination against women issued

by the United Nations Convention in 1979. The Afghan constitution of 1980 also

guaranteed women’s right to work and to freely choose their profession. These laws

ensured that Afghan women enjoyed the inalienable right of all human beings to

work and allowed them to gain employment as teachers, medical doctors; some

worked as professors, lawyers, judges, journalists, writers and poets (PBS, 2006). In

1996, however, the Taliban immediately revoked this right to work and introduced

other oppressive edicts specific to women. The Taliban’s first edict on women’s right

to employment came in 1997, banning all women from working in public places. After

the United Nations intervention, the Taliban did allow some women to take paid

employment from international aid agencies, including UN bodies, until July 2000

when they issued a decree banning all Afghan women from working in aid agencies

except for those in the healthcare sector. In May 2001, eight months before the US-

led invasion, the Taliban issued a decree that severely limited women’s freedom of

movement. Women could travel only when accompanied by a male relative. They

were also ban from driving a car and appearing in most public places (Azizah, 2001).

These restrictions limited their chances of taking up gainful employment in the formal

sector of the economy and culminated in solitary confinement. Informal sector

employment includes employment in agriculture, animal husbandry, carpet weaving,

tailoring, embroidery, soap making, candle making, honey production and baking.

These types of employment had very little impact on the status of women, as they

require skills many of them do not have and offering poor pay (PBS, 2007).

Some scholars suggest that Afghan women were ban from employment under the

pretext of security for them and what the Taliban considered acceptable female

behaviour based on the most conservative understanding of the holy Koran (Olesen

et al., 2005). On the contrary, Islam demands that men and women are equal before

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God and gave them various rights, including the right to vote, the right to work and

the right to choose their own partners in marriage (Azizah, 2001; Qazi, 2010).

Women had no choice but to obey the Taliban edicts that denied them their rights, as

circumvention often attracted harassment and public flogging (UN, 2002).

Elimination of Gender Discrimination in Employment

The Afghanistan society is both conservative and traditionally patriarchal. This dates

back to thousands of years of its history, most of which has been tampered by many

years of wars. The predominant religion is Islam, with its patriarchal values of male

dominance. This probably explains why the Communist Party of Afghanistan took

measures to reform gender discrimination in the late 1970s. As noted earlier, the

Afghanistan Government signed the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination

against Women, an international bill of rights for women issued by the UN in 1979.

The 1980 Afghan constitution incorporated the right of Afghan women to work and

freely choose their profession. The Taliban revoked the right to work with oppressive

edicts specific to Afghan women. The Taliban religiously enforced the edict against

women, and there were severe punishments for violations (PBS, 2007). Such action

amounted to discrimination based on gender.

The ouster of the Taliban in November 2001 brought the discrimination against

women into the political spotlight. The Special Adviser on Gender Issues and

Advancement of Women met with Afghan women non-governmental organizations

and women ambassadors from the permanent missions to the UN shortly after the

US-led invasion. In addition to the Secretary General of the United Nations, the

group discussed the contribution of women in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Hamid

Karzai, the head of the Interim Administration, signed the “Declaration of the

Essential Rights of Afghan Women” (CEDAW) in January 2002 following the group’s

initiative (UNAMA, 2010). The declaration affirmed the right to equality between men

and women, equal protection under the law, the institutional education of all women

in any discipline, freedom of movement, freedom of speech and political

participation. The declaration also affirmed the right of women to wear or not to wear

‘burqa’ or the scarf (UN, 2002). In general, the new Constitution of the Islamic

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Republic of Afghanistan (2004) prohibited any kind of discrimination against any

Afghan citizen.

These laws and many more aim to remove the Taliban edicts that systematically

violate women’s rights and open a floodgate of measures to boost employment

opportunities for Afghan women. For example, Article 22 of the Afghan constitution

provides that all Afghan citizens, have equal rights and duties before the law.

Similarly, Article 10 of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of

Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to which Afghanistan is signatory states

that the Government is obligated to make efforts to implement measures that

guarantee the equal rights of men and women. The Convention also stated in Article

12 that all signatory states must take necessary measures for the complete

eradication of discrimination in all its forms and manifestations against women.

Under Article 7 of the new constitution, the Afghan Administration has a duty to abide

by all UN charters, international treaties and international conventions they have

signed.

The new Afghan administration took a positive measure in 2002 and allocated some

$10 million to the Women’s Affairs Ministry to help strengthen women’s status

bartered by the Taliban. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs set a target to eliminate

gender discrimination in Afghan society at all levels by the year 2020. The Ministry

opened offices throughout Afghanistan, and women constituted 75 percent of its

workforce, as one of its main objectives is to help Afghan women find employment.

The green shoots of women’s employment started soon afterwards when HABTAT

a UN agency, employed 3,000 women to work in pasta-processing centres located in

urban areas. Three hundred women in Kabul; 100 women in Mazar-I-Sharif were

also employed by the World Food Programme at its bakery projects. These figures

were the first significant boost to women’s employment since the fall of the Taliban

(PBS, 2006). The success of these measures initiated by the Women Affairs

Department; was reported by the Grameen Foundation of the United States of

America when they posited that women owned an estimated 11 percent of

businesses in Afghanistan. However, the distribution of the success was not even

within all Afghan provinces. For example, whilst the capital city of Mazar-I-Sharif,

which is in the Western province of Balkh, recorded unprecedented levels of

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success, there were very limited successes in the Southern and Eastern provinces

(PBS, 2007).

Evaluating the Measures to Eliminate Gender Discrimination in Employment

The above analysis has shown that the measures aimed at the elimination or

amelioration of gender discrimination in Afghanistan have had limited success. In

2007, the international NGO Womankind Worldwide evaluation of the above

measures reported that the seven-year of American-led invasion had failed to stop

gender discrimination in Afghanistan. The report added that gender discrimination

had reached an alarming stage and that intensified effort was required to reverse the

trend. The report concluded that its findings clearly established that despite over six

years of international rhetoric about freedom and development for Afghan women,

there had been no meaningful change in the lives of millions of women in the

country. In other words, the measures taken to guarantee equal rights for Afghan

citizens after the Taliban had not produced any real change (AIHRC, 2007).

Similarly, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA),

states in its official communiqué in 2008, that the United States and its allies claimed

that the invasion of Afghanistan was to liberate Afghan women from the fetters of

Taliban rule. Yet, seven years since the invasion, the women still bear the heavy

burden of discrimination (RAWA, 2008).

One could argue, based on evidence of the literature review, that the measures

taken to eliminate gender discrimination in employment have had limited success.

The evidence indicated that success of the measures has not been widespread in

terms of location and type of jobs. For example, women in urban areas fared better

in terms of equality in employment opportunities compared to their counterparts in

rural areas. Afghan women living in urban areas were able to set up their own

businesses or go back into teaching, healthcare jobs etc. On the contrary, huge

inequalities in employment remain in Afghan rural areas. Afghan women remain

restricted to low paid employment in rural the sectors where they comprise 65

percent of the workforce. In the case of urban sector employments such as

education, healthcare and service industries, women continue to be in minority (PBS,

2007). Amnesty International (2005) reinforced this view when they reported that

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Afghan women continue to suffer widespread discrimination and mistreatment, which

are widely acceptable in rural communities. The report added that the Afghan

Government or the judiciary system has not addressed the systematic abuse of

women’s rights in such communities.

Finally, having established that equality of opportunities measures have had a limited

impact upon the gender discrimination that has limited employment opportunities for

Afghan women, we must now examine some of the main reasons for the

continuation of discrimination despite the equality measures.

Gender Discrimination Nine Years after the US-led Invasion

As noted earlier, nine years since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, women

continue to face barriers in employment. In other words, despite the measures taken

by the new Afghan Administration to addresses gender inequality, women do not

enjoy equality in employment, especially in rural Afghan communities for which

information is available. Two recent reports attributed this to cultural and religious

practices. For example, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan

(UNAMA) citing the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against

Women (CEDAW Committee), describes harmful traditional practices as follows:

“Harmful traditional practices are based on traditional attitudes by which women are regarded as subordinate to men or as having stereotyped roles and perpetuate widespread practices involving violence or coercion, which may justify gender-based violence as a form of protection or control of women. The effect of such violence on the physical and mental integrity of women is to deprive them of the equal enjoyment, exercise and knowledge of human rights and fundamental freedoms” (2010, p. 5).

UNAMA (2010) added that despite the passage of the Law on the Elimination of

Violence against Women (EVAW) in 2009, which criminalizes many harmful

traditional practices throughout Afghanistan, harmful practices are pervasive,

occurring in varying degrees in all communities, urban and rural, and among all

ethnic groups. The report also argued that the current Government is unable to

implement the laws that guarantee the rights of women fully and thus allows gender

discrimination to continue unabated. In 2001, the Integrated Regional Information

Networks (IRIN), a project of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

blamed the harmful cultural and religious practices that are prevalent mostly in rural

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Afghan communities. The report identified 1,900 cases of harmful practices

culminating in the mistreatment of women including discrimination in employment in

26 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces recorded in a database run by the Ministry of

Women’s Affairs and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

These reports demonstrated that gender discrimination in Afghanistan has its origin

in an entrenched belief system that puts the value of men and boys over that of

women and girls (UNAMA, 2010; IRIN, 2010; Nordberg, 2010). Similarly, RAWA

(2008) reported that when an international NGO staff approached an Afghan judge

and asked him to legalize consensual sexual relations, the judge said that much as

Afghans welcome current reform measures, their cultural values will never change

and that any attempt to impose foreign values on Afghans would not succeed. In

other words, any measure taken in order to change the harmful cultural and religious

practices is likely to be resist by conservative Afghans. Thus, one could attribute the

reason for the continuation of gender discrimination to the failure of the laws to

protect the employment rights of Afghan women. For example, Afghan women are

denied many rights including right of employment granted under the Sharia Law,

Afghan constitution and International Conventions rectified by the Afghan

Administration. One scholar even suggests that the cultural and religious practices

reinforced by many conservative Afghans are sometimes at variance with the laws

and Islamic religious teachings that are attributable more to cultural interpretations of

religious precepts (Amor, 2009).

Women in de facto Taliban-controlled areas continue to suffer gender discrimination

culminating in barriers to employment. The Taliban continues to use the Sharia Law

to justify the discrimination and harsh treatment of women. Human Rights Watch

(2010), for instance, reported that many high-profile women were assassinated for

standing up against discrimination and that their killers have not faced justice in the

Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan. The report contended that threats, violence

and intimidation were regularly used to silence opposition politicians, journalists and

civil-society activists who speak out about gender discrimination in the Taliban-

controlled areas.

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The predominant religion in Afghanistan is Islam; the practice of Islamic religion

forms an essential part of Afghan life. However, the decades of war have given

Afghan people limited opportunity to develop intellectually, both in religious and

secular studies. Thus, custom and tradition are mixed with religion. Most often, tribal

elders often acting as judges within an out-dated justice system misinterpret the

religious values and laws. The tribal elders have no modern means of carrying out

investigation and prosecution, which do not require circumstantial evidence and do

not give the right of appeal. This type of ‘justice’ has an inherent flaw and often leads

to injustice. Afghan women are at the receiving end of the out-dated justice system

controlled by tribal elders who believe in the inferiority of women and the subjection

of women to masculine authority. It is not surprising that the sentences received by

Afghan women are often brutal and unfair (HRW, 2010). As gender discrimination

that affects women’s right to employment is rooted in religious and cultural practices,

this paper calls on the international community to disassociate religion and traditional

values from oppressive cultural practices and to avoid making the mistake of

targeting all with the same policy measures.

Human Rights Watch (2009) reported another reason for the perpetuation of gender

discrimination when they found the current Afghan Administration to be complicit in

dealing with issues of justice in areas within their control. The police training involves

little or no training in gender-based discrimination or women’s rights. The police

training, since the US-led invasion, has mainly focused on counter-insurgency and

security skills rather than community policing. This is compounded by the fact that

deeply entrenched cultural and religious practices prevent many women from

accessing the police or the courts because of the fear of being stigmatized,

especially in rural communities. In addition, women face discrimination in police

stations and prejudice in courtrooms from judges who often do not know the law but

penalize women according to their interpretation of the Sharia Law. Women are

jailed often base on the conservative cultural view or interpretation of the Sharia

Law. Furthermore, despite the widely welcomed policy measure aimed at female-

staffed Family Response Units (FRUs) in police stations, gender discrimination

continues unabated. This has been blamed on poor implementation of the spirit of

FRUs, insufficient numbers of women police officers and inadequate training,

mentoring and facilities (HRW, 2009).

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Corruption within the ranks and files of the Afghan Government officials is also a

major reason for the continuation of gender discrimination culminating in inequality in

employment for women. According to the RAWA (2007) Communiqué, the large

sums of financial support from the international community mostly find their way into

the wallets of corrupt Government officials who are doing nothing to stop

discrimination against women. The communiqué argued that if the billions of dollars

of aid funds going into the wallets of criminals in power had been used as planned,

many lives would have been saved, especially those of Afghan women who have

suffered persistent discrimination. The communiqué concluded by issued a damning

indictment against the US-led coalition for imposing the corrupt officials on the

Afghan people. It queried the sincerity of the US and its allies and argued that if they

genuinely believe in freedom, they should have condemned and punished the

corrupt officials.

Finally, the current Afghan Administration and international community must address

these reasons given for the perpetuation of gender discrimination in the run up to the

ten-year anniversary of the US-led invasion in light of the promises made to the

Afghan people. Tackling gender discrimination would help promote equality in

employment for all Afghan people.

Conclusion

The finding of this paper based on the literature review could be summarised as

follows: The liberation of women in Afghanistan from the shackles of oppression by

the Taliban was given as one of the primary reasons that prompted the US-led

invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The measures taken to deal with gender

discrimination included the ratification of international conventions, amendments to

the Afghan constitution, the establishment of international human rights NGOs and

the establishment of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. These measures

notwithstanding, gender discrimination has persisted with a profound impact on

Afghan women’s right to work, especially in rural areas.

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The justice system that is bias against women is the reason for the current state of

affairs. To compound the situation, patriarchal tribal elders whose attitudes against

women lie at the root of the gender discrimination dominate the criminal justice

system. This is in addition to the bias against women by the generally revered

cultural and religious practices of Afghanistan, especially in rural areas and areas

still under the control of the Taliban. Official corruption is rife, and most crimes go

unpunished. The law enforcement officers are not trained well enough to deal with

issues concerning gender discrimination, as training efforts have mainly focused on

security and counter-insurgence. Thus, this paper argues that the Afghan

Administration and its international partners’ preoccupation with terrorism and

security have taken attention away from women’s rights. Nine years since the US-led

invasion, the promise to liberate Afghan women is beginning to sound like lip service

being paid to the plight of Afghan women, especially in rural communities and areas

still under Taliban control.

This paper recommends the full implementation of the constitutional reforms and

conventions on the rights of women. In addition, the criminal justice system needs

reforms to stop injustices and allow punishment for any discrimination or crime

against women. A fair criminal justice system will terminate official corruption and the

abuse of power. The court systems must be simplified in rural areas, involving more

women in the judiciary system. Police training must include respect for the rule of law

and women recruited into the force.

All parties and stakeholders in the current effort to rebuild Afghanistan must be fully

committed to the rule of law and respect international human rights and humanitarian

law guaranteeing the protection of all people irrespective of gender, religion, class or

tribe. Investigations must be carried out and people made accountable for any

violation irrespective of who they are or their position in the society. The US and its

allies have a duty as an occupying force to ensure compliance with human rights and

humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict.

The current misunderstandings of cultural and religious practices must be dispelled,

and education for all should be encouraged, creating awareness of its long history

and correct interpretation. Tribal elders and religious leaders must be enlightened to

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understand the rights of women in light of religion. The international community must

facilitate the proposed reform and build trust among the people by respecting ancient

values and traditions that respect women’s rights.

Finally, gender issues must be accorded priority by both the current Afghan

Administration and the international community. They should be proactive both in

empowering women through education and in encouraging awareness of their rights.

The US and its allies must continue to work for peace and security, but they must

tackle official corruption and encourage reform of the harmful religious and cultural

practices that are crucial in any meaningful measure that will bring enduring positive

changes to the employment rights of Afghan women.

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References

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